QCustomPlot Huge Amount of Data Plotting - c++

Question

I am trying to plot some serial data on my Qt Gui program using qcustomplot class. I had no trouble when I tried to plot low sampling frequency datas like 100 data/second. The graph was really cool and was plotting the data smoothly. But at high sampling rates such 1000data/second, plotter makes a bottleneck for serial read function. It slow downs serial there was a huge delay like 4-5 seconds apart from device. Straightforwardly, plotter could not reach the data stream speed. So, is there any common issue which i dont know about or any recommendation?
I thougth these scenarious,
1- to devide whole program to 2 or 3 thread. For example, serial part runs in one thread and plotting part runs in another thread and two thread communicates with a QSemaphore
2- fps of qcustom plot is limited. but there should be a solution because NI LABVIEW plots up to 2k of datas without any delay
3- to desing a new virtual serial device in usb protocol. Now, I am using ft232rl serial to usb convertor.
4- to change programming language. What is the situation and class support in C# or java for realtime plotting? (I know it is like a kid saying, but this is a pretex to be experienced in other languages)
My serial device send data funct(it is foo device for experiment there is no serious coding) is briefly that:
void progTask()
{
DelayMsec(1); //my delay function, milisecond
//read value from adc13
Adc13Read(adcValue.ui32Part);
sendData[0] = (char)'a';
sendData[1] = (char)'k';
sendData[2] = adcValue.bytes[0];
sendData[3] = (adcValue.bytes[1] & 15);
Qt Program read function is that:
//send test data
UARTSend(UART6_BASE,&sendData[0],4);
}
union{
unsigned char bytes[2];
unsigned int intPart;
unsigned char *ptr;
}serData;
void MedicalSoftware::serialReadData()
{
if(serial->bytesAvailable()<4)
{
//if the frame size is less than 4 bytes return and
//wait to full serial receive buffer
//note: serial->setReadBufferSize(4)!!!!
return;
}
QByteArray serialInData = serial->readAll();
//my algorithm
if(serialInData[0] == 'a' && serialInData[1] == 'k')
{
serData.bytes[0] = serialInData[2];
serData.bytes[1] = serialInData[3];
}else if(serialInData[2] == 'a' && serialInData[3] == 'k')
{
serData.bytes[0] = serialInData[0];
serData.bytes[1] = serialInData[1];
}
else if(serialInData[1] == 'a' && serialInData[2] == 'k')
{
serial->read(1);
return;
}else if(serialInData[0] == 'k' && serialInData[3] == 'a')
{
serData.bytes[0] = serialInData[1];
serData.bytes[1] = serialInData[2];
}
plotMainGraph(serData.intPart);
serData.intPart = 0;
}
And qcustom plot setting fuction is:
void MedicalSoftware::setGraphsProperties()
{
//MAIN PLOTTER
ui->mainPlotter->addGraph();
ui->mainPlotter->xAxis->setRange(0,2000);
ui->mainPlotter->yAxis->setRange(-0.1,3.5);
ui->mainPlotter->xAxis->setLabel("Time(s)");
ui->mainPlotter->yAxis->setLabel("Magnitude(mV)");
QSharedPointer<QCPAxisTickerTime> timeTicker(new QCPAxisTickerTime());
timeTicker->setTimeFormat("%h:%m:%s");
ui->mainPlotter->xAxis->setTicker(timeTicker);
ui->mainPlotter->axisRect()->setupFullAxesBox();
QPen pen;
pen.setColor(QColor("blue"));
ui->mainPlotter->graph(0)->setPen(pen);
dataTimer = new QTimer;
}
And the last is plot function:
void MedicalSoftware::plotMainGraph(const quint16 serData)
{
static QTime time(QTime::currentTime());
double key = time.elapsed()/1000.0;
static double lastPointKey = 0;
if(key-lastPointKey>0.005)
{
double value0 = serData*(3.3/4096);
ui->mainPlotter->graph(0)->addData(key,value0);
lastPointKey = key;
}
ui->mainPlotter->xAxis->setRange(key+0.25, 2, Qt::AlignRight);
counter++;
ui->mainPlotter->replot();
counter = 0;
}

Answer 1

Quick answer:
Have you tried:
ui->mainPlotter->replot(QCustomPlot::rpQueuedReplot);
according to the documentation it can improves performances when doing a lot of replots.
Longer answer:
My feeling on your code is that you are trying to replot as often as you can to get a "real time" plot. But if you are on a PC with a desktop OS there is no such thing as real time.
What you should care about is:
Ensure that the code that read/write to the serial port is not delayed too much. "Too much" is to be interpreted with respect to the connected hardware. If it gets really time critical (which seems to be your case) you have to optimize your read/write functions and eventually put them alone in a thread. This can go as far as reserving a full hardware CPU core for this thread.
Ensure that the graph plot is refreshed fast enough for the human eyes. You do not need to do a full repaint each time you receive a single data point.
In your case you receive 1000 data/s which make 1 data every ms. That is quite fast because that is beyond the default timer resolution of most desktop OS. That means you are likely to have more than a single point of data when calling your "serialReadData()" and that you could optimize it by calling it less often (e.g call it every 10ms and read 10 data points each time). Then you could call "replot()" every 30ms which would add 30 new data points each time, skip about 29 replot() calls every 30ms compared to your code and give you ~30fps.
1- to devide whole program to 2 or 3 thread. For example, serial part
runs in one thread and plotting part runs in another thread and two
thread communicates with a QSemaphore
Dividing the GUI from the serial part in 2 threads is good because you will prevent a bottleneck in GUI to block the serial communication. Also you could skip using semaphore and simply rely on Qt signal/slot connections (connected in Qt::QueuedConnection mode).
4- to change programming language. What is the situation and class
support in C# or java for realtime plotting? (I know it is like a kid
saying, but this is a pretex to be experienced in other languages)
Changing the programming language, in best case, won't change anything or could hurt your performances, especially if you go toward languages which are not compiled to native CPU instructions.
Changing the plotting library on the other hand could change the performances. You can look at Qt Charts and Qwt. I do not know how they compare to QCustomPlot though.